Devices of the type ConPro 200 and ConPro 400 as well as ConPro link with the function “linking” and ConPro Therm with a cooking facility and loading robot of Albert Handtmann Maschinenfabrik GmbH & Co. KG, D-88400 Biberach/Riss are known, with which coextruded food products, e.g. food products coated with an outer mass, can be manufactured. A strand of a pasty inner mass, for example, sausage meat, is fully coated with a gel that is solidified, for example, using a fixer solution. The strand can subsequently be divided or linked. Separate filling machines for the inner mass and for the outer mass and a coextrusion unit are combined in the known devices. The filling machines must operate in manner coordinated with each other, since the amount of outer mass is to be matched exactly to the amount of inner mass. Each filling machine has its own control unit. The control unit units can optionally be connected to each other via a data interface. Each filling machine contains both the mass delivery pump as well as its drive. The inner mass filling machine can act as a master to which the outer mass filling machine is associated as a slave.
Devices of the type RS 191 of the Risco company for manufacturing such gel-coated sausage products are known in the market in which the outer mass is during co-extrusion fed by a pump being arranged in a coextrusion unit and comprising a drive in the coextrusion unit. The design is complex, since the inner and outer masses are provided by different machines and these machines are to be precisely coordinated with each other. The coextrusion unit requires an additional control unit, at least for the drive of the pump for the outer mass and/or can be linked via a data interface to the control unit of the inner mass filling machine.
The structural complexity of and the space required for the known devices again significantly increase if, for example, a further component such as a lubricant or adhesive agent needs to be processed, or a fixer solution is to be applied for solidifying the outer mass.
A device of this type is known from EP 0 226 925 A1 in which a gear wheel pump with its own drive is associated with a filling machine as a downstream machine unit.
In the known devices, no central control unit can be provided which is advantageous in view of simple operation, external data interfaces are possibly necessary, the device requires an inexpediently large amount of space, the costs of the device are high and the effort when cleaning the modules of the device is great.